At its rather exclusive ARM Tech Day 2014 in Austin, the British company has given us more details on the future of its mobile efforts — in specific, its upcoming Cortex-A53 and -A57 CPU cores. ARM also said that, after passing the the $60 mark last year, the cheapest Android phones will be just $20 “in the next few months.” According to ARM, these cheap devices will cause the low- and mid-range smartphone and tablet markets to more than double over the next five years, resulting in almost 2.5 billion total mobile device shipments by 2018… and they’ll (probably) all use ARM chips.

Cortex-A53 and -A57 relative performance, compared to Cortex-A7 and -A15, at the current process node (28nm) and future nodes (20/16nm)

First, let’s talk about those A53 and A57 cores. The A53, which should arrive in phones over the next few months, is ARM’s first 64-bit ARMv8 CPU core; it is a mid-range chip. The A57, which also uses the new ARMv8 architecture, should arrive in early 2015; it’s a high-end chip. As you can see in the graph above, ARM now expects the A53 to be around 50% faster than the Cortex-A7, at around the same power consumption. The A57 is again around 50% faster than the Cortex-A15, but it also consumes more power. It’s only when TSMC and GlobalFoundries move to 20nm and 16nm FinFET that Cortex-A57 cores will truly shine.

Cortex-A57 performance in 32-bit and 64-bit workloads, vs. Cortex-A15

It’s worth pointing out that these new ARMv8 cores are fully backwards compatible with 32-bit code — and as you can see in the graph above, the A57 is still significantly faster than the A15 in 32-bit workloads.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410, 610, and 615 will use the Cortex-A53 CPU core, with the 410 due to hit the market any day now. The Snapdragon 808 and 810 will use both A53 and A57 cores in a big.LITTLE arrangement, but they’re not due until 2015 (and will probably use TSMC’s 20nm HPM process).

Utterly insane ARM SoC sales in China

Along with power consumption and performance, the other corner of the mobile computing triforce is cost — and really, ARM scores so highly on all three metrics that it’s no surprise that it has completely dominated the mobile market. Other players, like Intel, might be able to compete in terms of power or performance — but at the end of the day, ARM’s strategy of licensing its IP to any company with a pulse was always going to win out. Case in point: In 2011, cheap-and-cheerful Chinese ARM licensees sold around 15 million tablet SoCs; in 2013, that figure was 100 million. To complete the picture, four years ago the ARM tablet market didn’t even exist — it was just x86 laptops.

ARM is big in the mobile space, and that space is only going to get larger as costs go down and mobile connectivity improves.

And of course, as the price of SoCs continue to fall, the total size of the market continues to grow. If you thought the smartphone and tablet market was already big at around 1.3 billion devices shipped in 2013, you ain’t seen nothing yet (according to ARM and Gartner’s estimates, anyway). By 2018, the “smart mobile device” market (i.e. smartphones and tablets) could reach almost 2.5 billion total shipments. For comparison, PCs peaked at around 350 million per year in 2011 and 2012. ARM expects low-end smartphones to hit a $20 price point later this year, and there’s no reason that price reductions will end there.

All in all, things are looking pretty good for ARM Holdings — a small, British company that has just 2,000 employees and diminutive annual revenues of around $700 million.

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Really though,isn’t the market going where the telcos tell us they are going. True the tablets,are somewhat on their own itenary. Then looking through it,there is only several operating systems available. So I wonder what part of that number is a % of Telco sold devices. And which sold the most of each.
STill I dont see a lot of anything other than a Samsung,or an Apple etc. . Maybe an LG . Of course if your ‘only’ talking about ARM processors. I only say to myself – “yeah thats the android thing”.
Like the way you said that ‘made a bunch of Chinese Arm liscensees ….’.
I dont know jack squat about ARM processing/computing/software environment.

dc

world has a lot of telcos. It’s not all about the usa.

Guest

What makes you think I was talking about the USA ? I dont think I’m going to miss anything I can’t use here. But I’m seeing a lot of stuff going on in Europe that doesn’t come to these shores for a while.

Are you saying domination of the Telcos in buying choices is only in the USA ? The Telcos don’t dominate purchasing equipment overseas ?

Guess lately there is some leeway in taking a given device and choosing your Telco after you make that choice. However I have only noticed a telco showroom floor that coordinates what can be used with their ‘wireless networked devices’.

Mean overseas devices may confuse me a little. But in USA Telco devices confuse just as little when they are pretty much most of what ARMS are intended uses.

Other than the tablets where network connectivity is optional. Then again I simply have not seen a whole lot of even the portable ARM equipped devices. W/o the needed Telco support.

dc

I think most of the 20 dollar models are going to be sold in Asia, India and Latin America. I don’t see much demand for them in the USA or Europe. As for telcos locking down phones, it varies. A few networks lock down phones you buy from them and a few require you to buy certain phones, but in most places you can buy an unlocked phone and just order a sim for it (or buy a sim).

ephemeris

Geuss shouldn’t surprise me the title of the article goes everywhere but here. Dont really care all that much about business payolas. When curcuit topology = market , but not exactly network.

Means talking bout the cell phones. The tablets. Then for the most part,there is not upgradable components,other than the SDs,or the SIMs. And cell phones have not typically had anything other than a USB. With as much the same with the Tablets- USB,and sometimes SD slot. The components are soldderd together.

Their usability is the same kind of stretch. Nick card,wireless,maybe hdmi. Touchscreen.

I just don’t see that somebody gives me a bag of money to use ,or buy one. Neither do I really see anything that can be purchased. Or benchmarks,proprieties,or anyother example.

I do see something looking for a network. Guess I’m not looking for anything that tells me to be a consumer. To keep me that way.

Why I need specs. .

http://batman-news.com dsad

Fucking idiot this is an article about a chipset not released yet and you’re going on about wanting a upgradable tablet. You’ll get benchmarks once the NDAs have lifted.

ephemeris

What NDA- No I’ll be happy when they are benched. Not only tablets,but cell phones . As well which operating systems will be supporting them,and what that will mean in using them. These will be for the most part Socs’, non-upgradable, and will mean taking the best of what can be made of them. Then what that means to the ‘network,and which it will pertain to. Or if I would like that to pertain at all. Given the choice to do so.
Like I said,put the video onto the phones,take the score from that. Which means both Telcos,and Socs,can keep making distance from what the systems mean ‘as a sale,and what they mean as a user of them.
Peg the comment early,because these whether or not there is an NDA,have to be supported by their developers. Don’t wait for an NDA is lifted,then shell out design and performance weaknesses.
Put them out there so somebody can see them.

Dozerman

I’d really like to see MIPS make a comeback. It seems that, in a SFF world at least, MIPS is a better contender than ARM. ARM just has better industry support.

Phil

Nothing new about this issue. Reminds me about the Beta versus VHS battle: The Sony backed Beta tape was smaller, had a more reliable mechanism, and had a stereo-only mode that rivaled the quality of music CDs. VHS had better marketing and easier licensing than Sony, so it prevailed except in high-end professional video equipment.

Mirimon

many people don’t understand just how good Beta was a s a format, rivaling the fidelity of laser disc… if only porn had backed Sony and Beta.. we might have been in the hi-def world long ago, 8k might be a thing of the past..
I imagine also what might have happened had Galileo’s combustion engine designs come to fruition during that period… would I finally have my hoverboard now?

Dozerman

Don’t forget the library in alexandria, too!

Sam Cerulean

Does this mean more potentially waste going to massive Rubbish mounds around the world

Marc Guillot

This week Phoronix’s Michael Larabel has benchmarked the CPU side on the new Tegra K1 (Cortex-A15 at 28nm).

The computing performance is awesome, keeping its ground against AMD AM1 APUs (Jaguar cores) and even giving a good fight on most tests to an Intel Core i3

Considering that it integrates a 192 Kepler Cores GPU (he still hasn’t benchmarked the GPU), this SOC will be a beast.

I can’t wait for Cortex-A57 SOCs. 50% more performance at 20nm and doubling that performance at 20nm/14nm is insane, ARM is entering on the desktop-able chips market.

massau

i guess this would be a super core for a board like the the raspberry pi but on steroids and whit 8Gb of ram.

pelov lov

There are Korean alternatives that even use a big.LITTLE configuration — 4 A15s and 4 A7s — which can be had for ~$200. The benchmarks above are those of standard A15s!

The A53s look particularly tasty. They consume roughly the same power as the A7s but offer ~50% higher performance on the same process.

massau

the best arm development boards i know of are boards whit the freescale i.MX6 chip. it are A9 whit a good gpu that supports opencl. udoo is very good for engineering because it combines an the MX6 whit an arduino for IO and real time stuff.

CristiovMaraquet

Well that is AMD’s last generation of Mobile APU’, the new generation would be much better.

RandomCruiser

Obviously it is not.
ARM officially said A57 20/25% faster that A15 in SPECint2000 clock to clock.
Geekbench is a bad written synthetic bench that do not gives any indication of the real performance of a SKU.
All this marketing fud will end as ARM will try to enter in microserver space, only SPEC2006 is allowed here………. fortunately

RandomCruiser

Obviously it is not.
ARM officially said A57 20/25% faster that A15 in SPECint2000 clock to clock.
Geekbench is a bad written synthetic bench that do not gives any indication of the real performance of a SKU.
All this marketing fud will end as ARM will try to enter in microserver space, only SPEC2006 is allowed here………. fortunately

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